Instagram Stories vs Snapchat Stories: Which one's better for your business? Here's the complete breakdown

In the digital age, if there's an idea that sounds creative, you'd probably find it already tried by someone else on the second page of Google results. Thankfully, you don't have to look far, to find out where Instagram took the "inspiration' from, for Instagram Stories.

It is by far, an exact actually, point by point replica of Snapchat's stories features. The internet is reacting like it always does to anything new – violent rejection followed by gradual acceptance, with a lot of memes in the process.

(Image source: Snapchat)

Here's everything you need to know about it.

What are stories?

Now you can post violate content on your Instagram that will last just 24 hours on people's homepages. Facebook owned Instagram says users will now have the ability to constantly post photographs and videos throughout the day, preferably on irrelevant things like your meals, pictures of your toes, cat pictures, irrelevant weather pictures and the likes – because your followers are really concerned about that. There is an unlimited content feature, with exactly the same features to add text, effects and filters. The content will last just 24 hours and will not appear on your profile (unless you post it deliberately) and you can control who views the content.

How is it different from Snapchat?

Basically, it isn't any different. There is only one negligible difference in the two; which is how both platforms prioritize content creation and consumption. While Snapchat opens to the camera and encourages users to post more, Instagram opens on your homepage and encourages users to scroll down first. Instagram stories will be visible first, while Snapchat encourages users to post their own stories first. Other than this, there isn't much to talk about when it comes to differentiating the two.

Which one's better for your business?

It really boils down to the number of followers on both the platforms. It's impossible for any organization to have the exact number of social media followers on each platform – your followers/fans would be drastically different on twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram & Pinterest and that is because audiences are used to expecting something different from each platform even if the content is exactly the same. If you started on one platform before the other, you should have more fans on it as compared to the other one. This means you've already got the advantage of increased on one platform – why not use that to prioritize it before the other?

Is it even legal?

Copyright and trademark laws do not protect the adoption of a feature by other companies even if it is currently unique to only one platform. The concept of stories cannot be protected by law – as long as its implementation is different. Take for example the concept of a status – that's been sued by virtually all social media platforms from Hi5, Orkut to Facebook. As long as the concept of implementation is different, which means the source code is different and the design is too, it's good to stay.

Which side of the Instagram Stories vs Snapchat stories are you on? Let us know in the comments on our official Facebook page Entrepreneur India